William
Shockley

Hubris
and the Transistor

William Bradford Shockley clearly
was one of the brightest scientists of the 20th century, yet he lived
a life of noisy desperation.

He was a modern hero taken from
one of the ancient Greek tragedies, caught in an age he helped invent.
Like Orestes and Oedipus, Shockley was driven by the internal demon
of hubris. Unlike Orestes and Oedipus, however, he never found redemption.
Yet without him, you would probably be doing something less interesting
right now.

"One
of the century's most important scientists" according
to Time Magazine

Shockley was the leader of the team
that created the transistor, the seminal invention of the century. There
are those who were offended by his abrasive personality and unpopular
views who would deny him credit for inventing the transistor. He was
the father of Silicon Valley; his company the womb from which virtually
all the Valley's dominant companies and technologies would emerge. He
was a leading proponent of the science of operations research in America,
beginning in World War II, with desk-bound calculations that probably
saved tens of thousands of lives. Although he won the highest possible
civilian honor for his work, that work has long been forgotten. He and
a colleague even helped invent a nuclear device independent of the Manhattan
Project scientists at Los Alamos. His analysis of the effects of aerial
bombing may have even contributed to the decision to drop the atomic
bomb on Japan.

And finally, he unhinged modern
science by asking questions that no one wanted asked, much less answered.
It destroyed his reputation.

Shockley watched the wealth and
power go to others, including the men he drove
from his presence with his pride and churlishness. He died in disgrace,
and, except for his loyal wife, Emmy, quite alone.

The
Mayflower Connection

He came by his weaknesses honestly: from his parents.
Shockley came from a long, aristocratic American line, directly descending
from John Alden and Priscilla Mullins from the Mayflower on his
father's side. His father, William, was an MIT-trained mining engineer
and adventurer, quite capable of staring down bandits at gunpoint on
Mongolian railroads, but largely incapable of making a living. Shockley's
mother, May, of Missouri stock, was one of the first women graduates
of Stanford University, majoring in art and mathematics. She became
the first woman surveyor in Nevada's silver mining territory. William
was 24 years older than she; he was in his mid 50s.

They married in 1908 and moved to
London, where William had contract work. Their only child, William Bradford,
was born there Feb. 13, 1910.

Youth
being the father of man

Young William was a miserable child:
ill-tempered, spoiled, almost uncontrollable, who made his doting parents'
lives miserable. They were private, suspicious, vaguely paranoid people,
seemingly incapable of living in one place for more than a year. They
succeeded in passing this temperament to their son. After failing financially
in London, they moved back to Palo Alto, Calif., near Stanford. Shockley
spent his childhood there, moving from house to house. They kept him
out of public school until he was eight, believing they could educate
him better at home. That guaranteed that he would be deprived of useful
socialization. Only after William died in 1925 and May moved her son
to Hollywood did he have any stability.

Shockley entered the California
Institute of Technology in 1928 as a physics major. His practical jokes
are still a legend on campus.

Shockley with De Forest

His time at Caltech came during
the great intellectual ferment bubbling around quantum physics. Shockley
apparently absorbed most of it with astonishing ease. Following his
father's footsteps, he entered MIT for his Ph.D. in the fall of 1933,
quickly earning a reputation for scientific brilliance.

The summer of his first year, he
married Jean Alberta Bailey, an acquaintance of his mother, after she
had become pregnant. Their daughter was born that winter. He was an
aloof but not-unkind father to her.

Shockley became the protégé
of Philip Morse, a great Renaissance man and a pillar of the physics
establishment. Through Morse, Shockley got a job at American
Telephone & Telegraph Co.'s fabled Bell
Laboratories, first in New York City, later in New Jersey. It became
obvious to all around him that he had a unique talent besides his prodigious
intellect: Shockley could look at a problem and solve it faster than
anyone at Bell Labs, and he solved problems in ways they never imagined.

Bill Shockley in 1974 on how a sprained ankle in
college taught him about bureaucracy:
"I had one experience which gave me some slant
on the way large organizations run. I was not allowed to take spherical
trigonometry because I'd sprained my ankle. Because I'd sprained my
ankle I had an incomplete in gym, phys ed. And the rule was that if
you had an incomplete in anything, you were not allowed to take an overload.
I argued with some clerical person in the administration office, and
was stopped there. It's an experience which I've remembered since, and
advised people not to be stopped at the first point."